Update it may be the future!! Forget Video this is the future!! (Philips DVD R 890)

Member Name: macluke

Product:	Philips DVD R 890
Date:	10/01/03 (1197 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: superb recording, re-recordable superb quality, re-re-recordable superb quality!!!

Disadvantages: long manual, Phil!, Philips aren't very helpful

Just to say that this machine has had to go back to the manufacturer to be fixed after some 9 months, which did not impress me for the following reasons. I had to send the machine back to where I bought it from as Philips does not deal with their customers directly, which is a bit stupid considering that they are both in the same part of the country. Philips themselves took several days to reply to my original query and after a couple of weeks Lo and Behold my machine arrived back but with no explanation of what had been wrong just a short statement of what they had changed which meant nothing to me as I am not an engineer. This said the machine works again but I have little confidence in it as it has managed to eat several discs including one of my downloaded holiday discs and this was eaten after I had the machine fixed (fortunately I have a copy, which seems to still work at present). It even came up with the message that there was no disc in the machine, but having put the disc in the disc tray and closing it using the Clear button it now accepts there is a disc ? I would not mind so much but it is a Philips Disc!! What hope is there for the future if they cannot their own discs to play on their own machines. What is worse is the fact that they cannot be bothered to tell you what is wrong surely they know they must sell thousands of these machines. Well when I buy my new computer I shall make sure that I have a recordable DVD player on it as a back up for this. I should say in general now it has been fixed it is quite happy to record new programs on empty discs it just seems to have problem with previously part recorded discs ? there is a lesson in there somewhere.


Before I start I should point out that this is a DVD+RW player/recorder and the model I bought also had been converted to multi-region use and all for the just under list price of £478 (you can get it £50 cheaper if you don?t want multi-region from RGB in Ilford).

This
model has a sleek design and besides the obvious of DVD recording, this is the model that allows you to directly download from your camcorder via an I-link connection. You can record up to a massive 6 hours with this recorder and having tried them all each recording mode is better than any video recorder I own and I have four of them!
Recording modes are:-
HQ ? 60 minutes High quality
SP ? 120 minutes Standard quality ? this is the same as pre-recorded DVD
SP+ - 150 minutes better than SVHS quality
LP ? 180 minutes Long play SVHS quality
EP ? 240 minutes Extended play, better than VHS quality
EP+ - 360 minutes VHS quality.
As you can see quite an excess of times and qualities. I tend to use the LP mode and what a difference it makes, the quality of the picture, the being able to get to where I want on the disc quickly and conveniently, no more fuzzy pictures. I have all but thrown away the video recorders except for the fact that I shall be recording some of my vhs tapes onto dvd+r discs

You have the usual DVD player attributes that of digital picture quality, digital sound quality, favourite scene selection and the usual video attributes fast forward, reverse but at slow, fairly slow, medium fast and where the hell am I speed! Al this can be done from a very convenient remote control that allows you to take complete control of the recorder from instantly being able to record to editing the disc itself to put in chapter breaks titles almost anything you want to do with it.

If you are into reading it can take some time to get through the more complicated things that you can do with this machine, the man
ual that comes with it is some 78 pages long and although it has a ?friendly face? in the name of Phil there are times you could quite merrily strangle Phil if he were real, at least they have tried to provide a useful interface.

On its simplest level you just choose the station you want to record an
d select the recording mode from the remote and press the big button on the front of the recorder or the small red button on the remote, oh don?t forget to put a disc in, its as easy as that. Playback is a little bit more difficult as you have to select the recording you want from the on screen menu and press OK then you can either watch it warts and all or use the SYSTEM button just above the OK and then move fast forward etc. That?s the basics I could go on into finalising discs and editing etc. but you would get bored, suffice it to say its in the manual. As for me I have started recorder DVD+R?s for my son to play on the spare DVD player I now have connected to another television, I have transferred our holiday videos onto DVD and my wife is over the moon with Chevy Chase?s Christmas vacation as the video was coming to its life?s end having been played relentlessly and the reason I bought the multi-region version as for some reason you cannot get this on region 2.

Technical bit ? the back of the recorder has the usual 2 scarts, antenna, TV, S-video (out) out video (CVBS), analogue out audio (L and R) and digital audio out (for connecting to home cinema sound system). The front has stand by/on, channel =/-, rec mode, record, record led, open/close, stop, play/pause, fast forward/reverse, and under the flap DV/I-link (digital video input, IEEE 1394, Fire Wire), S-video, yellow socket (video input), white/red socket (audio input socket L/R).

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